page_title: Thomas A. Hendricks
section_title: Vice presidential nominee
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas A. Hendricks / High office / Vice presidential nominee
context_page_description: Thomas Andrews Hendricks was an American politician and lawyer from Indiana who served as the 16th governor of Indiana from 1873 to 1877 and the 21st vice president of the United States from March to November 1885. Hendricks represented Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He also represented Shelby County, Indiana, in the Indiana General Assembly and as a delegate to the 1851 Indiana constitutional convention. In addition, Hendricks served as commissioner of the General Land Office. Hendricks, a popular member of the Democratic Party, was a fiscal conservative. He defended the Democratic position in the U.S. Senate during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era and voted against the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. He also opposed Radical Reconstruction and President Andrew Johnson's removal from office following Johnson's impeachment in the U.S. House.
  Born in Muskingum County, Ohio, Hendricks moved to Indiana, with his parents in 1820; the family settled in Shelby County in 1822.
context_section_description: Hendricks ran for vice president in 1876 and 1884; he won in 1884. The Democrats also nominated Hendricks for the vice presidency in 1880, but he declined for health reasons. In 1880, while on a visit to Hot Springs, Arkansas, Hendricks suffered a bout of paralysis, but returned to public life. No one outside of his family and doctors knew his health was failing. Two years later he was no longer able to stand.
  In the disputed presidential election of 1876 Hendricks ran as the Democratic candidate for vice president with New York governor Samuel Tilden as the party's presidential nominee. Hendricks did not attend the Democratic convention in Saint Louis, but the party was pursuing the strategy of carrying the Solid South along with New York and Indiana.  The Indiana delegation urged Hendricks as the vice presidential nominee, and he was nominated unanimously.
  Although they received the majority of the popular vote, Tilden and Hendricks lost the disputed election by one vote in Electoral College balloting to Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican Party's presidential nominee, and William A. Wheeler, his vice presidential running mate. A fifteen-member Electoral  Commission that included five representatives each from the House, Senate, and U.S. Supreme Court determined the outcome of the contested electoral votes. In an 8 to 7 partisan vote, the commission awarded all twenty of the disputed votes from South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, and Oregon to the Republican candidates. Tilden and Hendricks accepted the decision, despite deep disappointment at the outcome.
  As chairman of the Indiana delegation, Hendricks attended the Democratic Party's national convention in 1884 in Chicago, where he was again nominated as its vice presidential candidate by a unanimous vote. Grover Cleveland was the party's presidential nominee in the 1884 presidential election; once again the Democrats' strategy was to win New York, Cleveland's home state, and Hendricks's home state of Indiana, plus the electoral votes of the Solid South. Democrats narrowly won New York, Indiana, and two more Northern states plus the Solid South to secure the election.
caption: Campaign poster for the election of 1876.
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